Reporting and analysis

Odoo produces its analyses from the data entered day to day, with no export and no reprocessing. This chapter covers the analysis views common to every application, the dashboards and the connected spreadsheets.

The analysis views

Two views are dedicated to analysis and are found on most screens. Some analyses also have a specific view, suited to their subject.

Graph view

1. Open an analysis screen: for example Sales › Reporting › Sales.
2. Click the graph icon, top right.
3. Choose the type of representation: bar, line, pie.
4. Select the Measures to represent.
5. Choose the breakdown criterion with Group By.

Bars can be stacked to compare subsets, and sorting by value ranks the results from largest to smallest.

Pivot view

1. Click the pivot table icon.
2. Place one criterion in rows and another in columns, by clicking the headers.
3. Select the Measures to display: amounts, quantities, margins, record count.
4. Expand the levels to drill down into the detail.

Cohort view

The cohort view tracks over time the behaviour of groups formed on the same date: how many of the opportunities created in January are still open in March, how many of the subscriptions taken out in the first quarter are still running a year later.

Reading the screen. Each row is a cohort: the items that entered in the same period. The columns that follow count the periods elapsed since: +0 for the starting period, +1 for the next, and so on. The cell gives what is left of the group, in value and as a percentage. The Average row aggregates all the cohorts.

Three controls govern the display: Measures chooses what is counted (Count by default, or an amount, the adjacent selector sets the granularity) Day, Week, Month, Quarter, Year, and the download icon exports the table to spreadsheet format.

Building an analysis

1. Open the analysis screen concerned.
2. Narrow the scope with Filters: period, company, team, status.
3. Choose the axis of reading with Group By.
4. Select the relevant Measures.
5. Switch between views without losing the filters applied.
6. Save the result in Favorites to come back to it directly.

The standard reports

Each application provides its ready-to-use analyses:

The dashboards

The Dashboards application gathers ready-to-use dashboards, fed live by the data in the database.

Viewing

1. Open the Dashboards application.
2. In the left-hand panel, select the section you want: for example Logistics.
3. Click the name of the dashboard: it opens in the main view.

Filtering

• The period selector, above the dashboard, restricts the analysis to an interval. By default it shows all the data.
• The time granularity (day, week, month, quarter) is set on the charts concerned.
• The search bar filters on a dimension: a customer, a vendor, a team.
• Global filters apply simultaneously to every element of the dashboard.

Customising

The screen that displays a dashboard is read-only in everyday use: no button on it allows any change. Modification goes through the application's configuration.

1. Open Dashboards › Configuration › Dashboards.
2. The list shows the sections: Sales, Finance, Logistics, Services, Marketing, Website, Human Resources, to which CRM and Subscriptions are added depending on the applications installed. These are the entries in the application's left-hand panel.
3. Open a section. The Spreadsheets tab lists the dashboards it contains, one per row.
4. Click Edit at the end of the row: the dashboard opens in the spreadsheet editor, with the tools described in section 19.5.
5. Add a line creates an additional dashboard in the section.

Each row also carries the distribution settings:

Connected spreadsheets

An integrated spreadsheet lets you rework Odoo data without exporting it: the values stay linked to the database and refresh.

Creating a spreadsheet from an analysis

1. Build the analysis you want in pivot view.
2. Use the insert-into-spreadsheet action.
3. Choose the destination spreadsheet: a new one, or an existing one.

The inserted table keeps its link with the database: the amounts update when it is opened.

Working in the spreadsheet

• Calculation formulas and Odoo-specific functions, allowing values to be called directly from the database.
• Refreshable pivot tables.
• Charts, including hierarchical representations in concentric rings, useful for breaking a total down into nested subcategories.
• Conditional formatting, to colour cells automatically according to thresholds: margins below a floor, payment delays, budget variances.
• Global filters, applied to the whole spreadsheet.

Sharing

Spreadsheets can be shared with other users, commented on and embedded in dashboards.

Exporting

1. Open the list view and apply the filters you want.
2. Select the records.
3. Click Actions then Export.
4. Choose the fields and the format.
5. Save the export template for periodic analyses.

Connecting a business intelligence tool

An external business intelligence tool can connect directly to the database to build advanced analyses.

Alerts and periodic reports

Being alerted on a condition

An analysis answers a question that has been asked; it assumes someone thinks to ask it. An automation rule takes over whatever has to be watched continuously: it observes a data model and warns of its own accord as soon as a condition is met: internal notification, email, activity creation.

The situations that lend themselves to it: stock below the critical threshold, a high-stakes deal with no activity for a week, a customer approaching their credit limit, a quotation margin below a floor.

Creating a rule, its triggers and its actions are covered in chapitre 21, which also gives the module to install beforehand (see section 21.1.1).

Receiving a periodic report

Odoo can send, at regular intervals, a summary email covering a selection of indicators. The feature is provided by the KPI Digests module, which is almost always present already: accounting, inventory, CRM, sales, projects and automation rules all depend on it. Were it missing, it would be installed from Apps by removing the Apps filter, the module not being an application.

Once the module is in place:

1. Open Settings › General Settings.
2. In the Emails block, tick Digest Email.
3. Choose the summary to send in the drop-down list that appears.
4. Click Configure Digest Emails to open the summary and set its frequency, its indicators and its recipients.

Filing documents automatically

The Documents application centralises the company's files and can sort incoming items: it assigns them a workspace and tags based on their content, then presents them for validation. It then feeds the other applications: a vendor bill dropped into the accounting space becomes an entry to check, a signed quotation goes back up onto the order.

Good practice